Someone Will
Back for another SDE demo.
I think the moment that country music was fully unlocked for me was seeing Kris Kristofferson at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in January of 2010. I was living there for the month while I wrote and recorded the Middle Brother album with my pals John McCauley and Matt Vasquez and my brother Griffin. Our good friend Sean Moeller was in town doing a Daytrotter session (if you don’t know what that is do yourself a favor and look it up) and he said he had extra tickets to this Kristofferson show. I had never been to the Ryman at this point and I had never heard his music. I liked country enough to be curious, but I had no real relationship to the genre other than the vague awareness that our grandfather Dawes LaFayette Goldsmith played it.
That night was overwhelming for me. I felt for the first time that all the magic that typically came from guitar tones, money notes, production value and all the general rock and roll pizzazz loved by all could be achieved just through lyrics. The show was just him and his guitar. My heart already belonged to lyric writing but Kristofferson widened the parameters in my brain of what was possible. He could barely play a D chord without accidentally muting some of the strings but when he got to the last lines of To Beat The Devil in his talk-sing voice or the perfect arc of the chorus of the Pilgrim, I felt like I was watching someone fly or arrive at some primordial truth all while giving me a wink and a smile. He was a sage, he was a warrior, he was James Dean, he was Otis Redding and he could barely sing or play. No offense Kris - you’re my hero. It was incredible.
This began my education. Kris led to Waylon, Waylon led to Willie, Willie led to Townes, Townes led to Guy and the journey goes on. I often joke that I write country while fronting a band that refuses to play them as country songs. 2012 was when I got stuck on Willie Nelson and his 100 studio albums (that’s not an exaggeration and it’s probably even larger by the time you’re reading this). 2012 is also the year I was writing for Stories Don’t End. So Willie had a big influence. Not just as a singer, but as a guitarist, as a mythical figure, and most of all as a writer.
I don’t think many people would cite Willie Nelson as an influence of mine based on listening to Dawes, but more than anyone I think he taught me the architecture of songwriting. Where to put titles (see Crazy), how to stretch a metaphor (see Half a Man), or how to knock someone out with just your first verse (see If You Could Touch Her At All). The examples don’t quit. And this says nothing of his singular guitar playing, his beautiful chord composition or his incredibly emotional singing.
I bring all this up because I think you can really hear it on the demo for Someone Will. I love what Griff and Wylie did to it to give it some energy and a richer life within a live set list. But listening back to this demo I’m transported back to studying those Willie records and how I was trying to chase down what made his tunes so magical to me. I like to think this song ended up sounding distinctly like Dawes. But I’m not ashamed to say he’s who taught me how to write it.
Here’s the demo of Someone Will recorded within days of writing it back in 2012 while I was living in my parent’s friend’s guest house in Malibu Canyon.